There are two methods of allocating provinces at the start of the game. Players start with 9 provinces in a 2- or 3-player game, 8 provinces in a 4-player game, and 7 provinces in a 5-player game.

Basic Setup

In a basic setup game, each player is automatically allocated a starting set of provinces with between 2 and 5 armies on each.

Advanced Setup

In an advanced setup game, players take turns choosing a province, and then allocating a number of armies on it. Each player will have the same distribution of armies (ranging from 2 to 5) to place on the provinces.

Two provinces are drawn at random for the first player to choose from. This player may choose to pick up one of these two, or a random province from the deck. Then, he/she must place a set of armies on that province. If a face up province is taken, it is replaced by the top card of the deck, and then the next player chooses a province and places armies.

If a player has the same selection of face up provinces that he/she had last round, he/she may replace those two cards with two new ones drawn randomly from the deck.

This process continues until all players have selected the proper number of starting provinces.